I meet Dennis Quaid in The Village recording studio, West LA. Every rock God from Tom Petty to Robert Plant seems to have made their greatest albums there. Quaid, 64, is recording his first album with his band The Sharks. He jokes, “The oldest rock band ever to make a debut album.” Everybody says it but it’s true. He’s handsome. Tall, ripped, good cheekbones and good hair and inquiring eyes – the kind that make you feel he’s interested in what you have to say. He’s in skinny jeans and a dark tee. He was born in Houston, Texas. Grew up wanting to be a cowboy or an astronaut. As an actor he could and was indeed both. His breakout leading role was in The Big Easy in 1986 famous for his sexy chemistry with Ellen Barkin. He was Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire (1989), played opposite Meryl Streep in Postcards from The Edge (1990) and was Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp (1994). He disappeared for a while as a leading man but returned in a Globe winning performance as the closet gay in Todd Haynes Far From Heaven (2002). He was in last year’s super weepy surprise hit A Dog’s Purpose. And he’s next up reprising his role in the Sci-Fi TV series Fortitude (Sky), set 400 miles from the North Pole – the safest place on earth that suddenly becomes violent, dangerous and spooky. “I really loved it,” he says of the extreme temperature. “I’ve been colder in New York.” In the last series his character (Michael Lennox) went a little crazy. After obsessively trying to find a cure for his wife’s far too rapidly progressing wasting disease, she dies. He becomes undone with grief and starts drinking. “How about that…” “I connected to my character because we’re both extremely bull headed.” Astrologically he’s not a bull, he’s an Aries and I know this because he’s the same day as my dad and Hugh Hefner – April 9. He and Hef had a birthday party together once. “It wasn’t really a joint birthday party. It was his party which I was at. It just happened to be my birthday.” He’s exactly the type who would never miss a Hef birthday bash. “April 9th people are filled with adrenaline. They are tenacious and optimistic. They run before they think. They are comfortable in extremes. The middle ground is…” (he pulls a face) “we don’t want that.” Quaid calls himself a romantic – has been married 3 times, divorced 3 times. The first to actress P J Soles (1978-1983), most famously to Meg Ryan (1991-2001), most recently to Texas real estate agent Kimberly Buffington (2004) and his divorce finalised just a few weeks ago. “I think what divorce does is it takes away your identity. It’s like a death. Your identity is wrapped up in the relationship and if it’s not going to be there…” His eyes are searching, troubled. He finishes the sentence, “who are you?” Isn’t it death of a family member and moving house that are supposed to cause the most stress to the human psyche? “And then there’s divorce which is death and moving. The birth of a child is another stressful situation. Not just because things could go wrong (his ten-day old twins were given a thousand times stronger dosage of blood thinner by mistake and the babies nearly died) but also because you have to redefine who you are.” Does he mean he was no longer Dennis but daddy? “Yes, my son Jack is 26 now. I was 38 when he was born and I realised my life was over. I could no longer have any guilt free experiences… I’m exaggerating but I am responsible for someone else in the world and that’s never going to go away. My mother (91) still worries about me.” She texts him nearly every day. His mother Juanita was in real estate and his father William Rudy an electrician. “He passed away when he was 63 in 1987 of a heart-attack. And I’m 64 so when I had my 63rd birthday it was a psychological moment – it definitely ran through my mind then I forgot about it until one night a few months ago I was having trouble sleeping and it hit me. My dad’s birthday was November 21st and he died on February 8th and I started adding up the days and I was exactly that age. Then the next day I realised I was older than he ever made. I made it past. I intend to live until I am 130.” How did he redefine himself when he had the twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace born via a surrogate in 2007? “It was very different. You have both of them coming at you at once. The good part is that they each have a playmate and the hard part is that you have to do everything double.” They are now 10. Did having twins change the relationship with his then wife? “Having kids always changes your relationship.” He says of Meg Ryan “We are friends.” I’m sure that wasn’t always the case. At the time of their separation in 2000 they were the biggest couple in Hollywood. They were at the peak of their careers. When they lost each-other they lost grasp on that, with only Quaid regaining acclaim and ratings. America’s sweetheart got puffy and pillow faced with fillers. Her currency redundant. Quaid stayed himself, determined, chiselled, handsome. He says he works out a lot because, “I’m vain. The industry’s vain.” Plus remember, he’s planning on living to 130 The most unusual place he had sex is in an elevator. “Is that really unusual?” he muses. “It was a slow elevator. It was in Quebec. It must be the French influence. It was the elevator going to my own apartment so it wasn’t like a public building.” That makes it a little more boring. “Well, not for me.” But there wasn’t the excitement that someone could call the elevator and the doors would open. “It’s true. I knew the other floors were currently unoccupied and no one was coming in but she didn’t,” he laughs. Was this a while ago? “Not too long.” Out of politeness I stifle my giggle because in the next room is his girlfriend of 2 years, French-Canadian model Santa Auzina, 31. She’s tall, blonde, endless legs, tiny lycra shorts, tiny vest, smiles a lot like nothing bothers her. We all wish we had that smile. She’s documented their love, their soulmate status with many Instagram posts of their exotic holiday destinations as a couple. I think Quaid enjoys talking about his mistakes. We start from the movies he turned down. “I turned down Big. I hit myself over that. At the time there were three other movies with a similar storyline and Big was going to be second but it wasn’t. I should have taken Big.” He also missed out on An Officer and a Gentleman. “I didn’t turn it down. I was on an around the world trip with my wife. In those days you could buy a ticket for $1000. My then wife PJ Soles and I were going around the world. We were literally half way round, in New Delhi, when my agent called and said, ‘The part is yours. You just have to come back. Taylor Hackford wants you’. We cut short the vacation. We flew back to LA and either they had decided while I was en route they wanted Richard Gere… I did not get the part.” Did that contribute to his first divorce – cutting short the big vacay? “No, they even said they would send me back on my vacation if it didn’t work out. They didn’t.” Curiously, he’s already played several presidents. Why does he think he’s such a good presidential candidate? “You get to a certain age and you can play presidents if you have that trustworthy/untrustworthy look.” So far, he’s been Clinton, Bush, and he’s just about to be Regan. “I was Bill Clinton in A Special Relationship (2010) when Michael Sheen was Tony Blair and a Bush like character (President Staton) in American Dreamz (2006). I was offered George W Bush for the Katrina film but I turned it down because of conflicts in schedule. Regan is a very interesting person. So many stories that people who were close to him didn’t really know him.” He became friends with Clinton. “I spent a weekend at the White House when I was married to Meg. We went there when we were invited to the King of Spain’s state dinner.” (In a frighteningly convincing Clinton impersonation he continues) ‘You’ve got to stay, you’ve got to stay. We’re gonna play some golf.’” “Meg went home, Hillary was out of town so it was just me and Bill. We played golf, we got in the Presidents Limousine and had a couple of Subway sandwiches. At the time I was better at golf but he would have been a much better golfer if he wasn’t President. “He was the smartest guy I’ve ever met and very kind to me. When it was announced that Meg and I were getting a divorce he called me from Airforce One. He was over the Atlantic right after Palestinian talks had collapsed. I don’t know how he found me but he did. He just wanted to let me know he was thinking of me.” The week after our interview he is off to Canada for a sequel to A Dog’s Purpose. He’s heard the stories that people who never cry dissolved during that movie. It’s sentimental, it’s about dogs who are devoted, who love you and then they die but the love goes on. Quaid has always been a dog person. Grew up with them. At the moment he has a miniature English bulldog named Peaches. “Just one. I had two French Bulldogs die in the same year. One natural causes as they say, he went into the kids bathroom which he never went into, lay down and had a stroke or heart attack. The other drowned in the pool. It was really hard to take. They weren’t brothers, they were two years apart but they loved each other.” We wonder could the second one have thrown himself into the pool on purpose? He nods, “It could have been. If you’re going to have pets you’re going to have death.” In the dog movie the dog is reincarnated and comes back several times as a different type of dog. Quaid has always been interested in various kinds of spiritual thinking – he doesn’t like organised religion. “When I was 11 I was baptised into the Baptist church. Then I was re-baptised in the Ganges river by a friend of mine who was a preacher. When I went round the world my question was ‘Who is God to you?’ I’ve read the bible twice, the Koran, the Baghavad Gita. I’m a seeker. I used to call myself a Zen Baptist. Basically, I’m a Christian but everyone goes through a crisis of faith. I have crisis all the time… but some of them are champagne crisis meaning that’s a pretend crisis.” The crisises in his life have been quite documented, especially the divorces and cocaine addiction, yet more recently he had a new addiction – the Swiffer. “Yes, it’s true. I got obsessed with dusting with the Swiffer. It was right after the divorce in my single life. I would get into bed and my feet were just black from everything. I didn’t like that feeling so I discovered the Swiffer. It works quickly and it picks up all the dust. Doesn’t that say something about my champagne crisis?” It says that he wasn’t comfortable without someone taking care of the home. It says that the dust in the apartment and the black feet symbolised that he was alone. He still drinks champagne and other forms of alcohol. He gave it up for 10 years as part of the process of giving up cocaine in the 90s. “Then I started drinking again because alcohol was never my problem. I never liked the feeling of being drunk.” Alcohol high and cocaine high are opposites. “I would do coke and I would use alcohol to come down.” What about doing coke so he didn’t feel drunk? “That was the deal back then so I had to break the cycle.” He reminisces. “I liked coke. I liked it to go out. I missed it for quite a while. I used to grind my teeth for four years. I was doing about 2 grams a day. I was lucky. I had one of those white light experiences where I saw myself being dead and losing everything I had worked for my whole life so I put myself in rehab. I had a band, basically Bonnie Raitt’s backing band and the night after we got a record deal we broke up. (Like in The Commitments) The next day I was in rehab.” “I took anti-depressants back in the day around coming off cocaine because there’s a depression that goes on. It’s a temporary thing. I don’t think they were ever intended to be taken on a long-term basis.” When he was coming off cocaine did he want to eat a lot? “Yes, I wanted to sleep too. I suddenly discovered sleeping.” He does eat. I’ve just seen him bolt a giant sandwich down in less than 30 seconds. “I’ve always had a high metabolism. I get high from exercising. I really do. I think it does what all those anti-depressants are supposed to do.” When he played Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp, he lost 44 pounds because the character was wasting away from tuberculosis. “I went down to 138 pounds and it took me a year to put it back on because when you get into that compulsive obsessive behaviour of not eating it does strange things to your mind and it took me a while to get over that self-image of myself. I got over it and now I don’t follow any diet and I like cooking. My signature dish? A Louisiana seafood gumbo.” “But I also like caviar. Would you like some? I’ve just bought some. It’s here in the studio fridge.” I decline to join the caviar party although any partying with Quaid has got to be fun. I am impressed with his self-confidence, his charisma. He has not had work done he has just worked on himself. For a minute I am confused but he reminds me, at my request, of some chronology. He was not doing drugs or alcohol went he met Ryan and they were married for 9 years. “I was single for several years and I met Kimberly. We were married in 2005 and our divorce finally wound up a couple of months ago.” The divorce with Kimberly went on and off a few times and the only constant was his band. He formed the Sharks 18 years ago. He tells me he was always a performer. Always a song writer. “The Sharks are having a great time. We’ve done about 40 gigs this year. After this last divorce I’ve really got back into music again. I was going to be a musician before I was an actor.” Has anyone famous ever recorded his songs? “No, that would be an ideal thing. I’ve been going to Nashville quite a lot recently. It’s my favourite city. It’s such a collegiate feeling. Everyone is there for each other.” We talk about the possibility of living in Nashville. “I tried to move back to Texas (Austin) because I grew up in Houston. But when I moved back I found myself meandering around the house. I didn’t factor in that I’d already spent 35 years in Los Angeles and your friends and the places you haunt… so I moved back.” “For 30 years I had a ranch in Montana. It was beautiful. I used to spend 4 months of the year there but then it dwindled down with work and whenever I’d go there I’d find for the first week I’d just be fixing things but I felt too guilty to go anywhere else so I decided to sell it.” “I grew up wanting to be a cowboy but as I grew up in Houston – a space city and I wanted to be an astronaut. Gordo Cooper was my favourite astronaut because he was a bit rock n roll and had a cool name. Gordo is short for Gordon. I read his book and said if they’re ever making a movie I want to play him. And I did. I met him and he put me in touch with a flight instructor. I’ve got my pilots license so now I can fly jets. I’m learning to fly a helicopter. It’s like riding a magic carpet… I love to travel. I just hate to leave but it’s always really great to arrive.” He does enjoy simple pleasures such as calf roping. “Calf roping is where you’re on a horse and another person is on the left and on the right the calf is let out of the chute. He runs, you catch the horns and the other person catches the foot. It was a skill learned when they gathered cows for branding but you get timed for it. “Horses are such sweet animals. Such intimacy when you are on a horse, especially bareback. He can feel your heartbeat and you can feel his. They are very sensitive animals, not predators. They always look around for danger.” He mimics a horse with eyes doing a panorama. He shows me pictures of the Icelandic horses he encountered when filming Fortitude and teams of dogs pulling his sledge. He explains that the dogs are ranked fastest at the front and get competitive with one another and that the horses are climbers. “About 3,000 people live there and 5,000 polar bears although I didn’t see a single one. It doesn’t snow the whole year but the snow blows around. They don’t have immigration or tariffs so it reminds you of the old West.” So once again a dream come true – an Arctic cowboy. He enjoyed the extreme of Fortitude where they had 5 days of almost total darkness. “I don’t know if there will be another series. If you’re an actor in a series you want to keep it going but maybe the golden age of many seasons is over.” He doesn’t seem to have the slightest insecurity about that. Santa is patiently waiting in another room. I wonder was it a conflict with his recently ex-wife? “No, it wasn’t a conflict. I met her very close after my ex and I were separated. I was just going to be single and that was just going to be it. I was going to be stone cold Steve Austin when it came to love and then Santa came along. It was like….” She replaced the Swiffer? “She’s better than a Swiffer, that’s for sure. She was not going to let it go. Couldn’t help it. So, I had to go with it. I am a romantic. I like being in a relationship, I really do. It’s fun to be single up to a point but I like being in a relationship. I also like having kids around, as annoying as they can be sometimes, I am a family orientated person.” Is he planning more kids? “I’m not planning kids. I don’t rule anything out.” And that’s how Dennis Quaid gets to be Dennis Quaid… he works out every day and he doesn’t rule anything out.

I’m waiting for Rob Lowe at the Polo Lounge, Beverley Hills Hotel. I’m sat in his favourite table, corner banquette outside. The best spot “for people watching”. When he arrives, the staff perform bowing rituals as if he is royalty. As indeed he is – Hollywood royalty, having started off in the 1983 era defining Francis Ford Coppola film The Outsiders and proceeding to become a high-octane member of the Brat Pack with Robert Downey Jr, Sean and Chris Penn, Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen after his role in St Elmo’s Fire.

After a decade of excess (of everything – alcohol, sex) he found his niche proper as Press Secretary Sam Seaborn in The West Wing.

There’s been a profusion of TV series including Code Black and the much loved Parks and Rec, a Globe nomination for his The Grinder and for his role as Dr Jack Startz (creepy cosmetic surgeon) in Beyond The Candalabra and a whole new career as an author. His memoirs Stories I Only Tell My Friends and Love Life are both wonderful reads (both NY Times Best Sellers) with just the right amount of fun, self-deprecation and revelation.

In the flesh he is so handsome you gasp – perfect, chiselled, jaw droppingly handsome. His skin is firm and tan, his slinky body ripples under his dark blue T shirt. His eyes are cornflower blue. Not surprisingly he’s got a skincare range called Profile. Who wouldn’t want to have his skin?

“I’m so hungry,” he announces as soon as he sits down. While you might assume Rob Lowe’s hungry would be for a piece of steamed fish, it’s a burger he’s craving with fries and we share a Macarthy salad to start. It’s an enormous chopped salad involving very bad things.

He’s about to leave for London where on December 1 he will perform his one man show Stories I Only Tell My Friends. He says he’s written it instead of a third book. He’s also going to be filming Wild Bill, a crime drama for ITV set in the Midlands.

When the chunky salad comes it seems as if he’s hungry on another level, an emotional one. Is that a tear glistening in his eye?

He tells me his three-year old dog, Jack a German short haired pointer has just died. He’s in town for meetings. His home is in Santa Barbra and everything happened so quickly he couldn’t get back to say goodbye. “By yesterday he was blind and having seizures. They think he was poisoned. I saw him eating mushrooms in the yard… I pulled him off but I must have been too late… He was such a f****** good boy. I’ll show you a picture of him.”

He shows me the dog – sensitive eyed, brown and white speckled. Lowe loves his dogs. He has another, a Jack Russell called David. He took David to see an animal communicator.

“She would give voice to the animal such as ‘David wants you to know he’s working very hard and he doesn’t feel he’s appreciated.’ David is 17 and every time I go away I think somethings going to happen to him…but it was this guy. He was so happy and I’ve never had a dog that would play fetch with me all day long. David doesn’t do fetch but David was a surf professional. He would surf with his own life preserver on and a dog board but he gave it up.”

Would Lowe ever give up surfing? “Hell no. I’m into it more than ever.” Lowe is into many things. He’s the ultimate multi tasker. Acting, writing, surfing. There’s an energy from him that’s nothing to do with his high caffeine consumption. It’s an inner drive. It’s electric. It’s palpable. He’s used to turning things around. There have been quite a few life changing choices that have gone on for Lowe but more of that later.

“You know all dogs go to heaven.”

My sunglasses fall off my head because the arms are too wide. He tries to fix them. He’s got such elegant hands, long fingers, pink nail beds, an intricate wedding ring and a wizardy looking gold ring with a diamond triangle, both made by his wife Sheryl (nee Berkoff), the jewellery designer who sells at Bergdorfs and Niemans. High end stuff for high end people.

Does the wizardy one have magic powers?

“In a way. It’s the sign for being in recovery.” I’ve never seen anyone with a recovery style ring as beautiful as this one but I’ve never really seen anyone that’s been in recovery for 20 years. He’s passionate about being in recovery. He said if he’d been on the booze he wouldn’t have achieved anything and right now his days are very full.

“This is a very famous salad you know. It feels very Jackie Collins in the best possible way.” Indeed, it was her favourite salad. “I made it into one of her books once. It was a career highlight. It read ‘he walked into the room and he looked like Rob Lowe.’” I tell him no one looks like Rob Lowe. “You’re nice to say it,” and he smiles, happy to have a compliment and I’m happy that he’s not one of these people who say, ‘no, no, surely not.’

The waitress delivers a candle even though it’s daylight to help the flies go away. They noticed from afar that the flies were bothering him. “Flies love me. I hate flies. My wife hates flies. Sheryl Lowe loses it over flies. Once we were in Hawaii. It’s a beautiful day and she says, ‘these flies have red faces.’ There’s nobody more quotable than Sheryl Lowe. I’ve had more people offer to make a reality series out of her than…”

Wait a minute. I thought you already did a reality series with your boys (Matthew 25 and John Owen 23). “Both smart, cool guys. The Lowe Files was us on the road exploring supernatural legends. A very different kind of reality. I loved it and I’m proud of it but if we had the traditional cameras following us everywhere it would be the biggest thing because my family is so nuts…My wife is such an original. Her business is growing faster than she can keep up with. It’s very inspiring to watch but not surprising. One of the reasons I fell in love with her when I was dating everybody under the sun was that she had her own business, her own work life, a tremendous work ethic and she was so driven. And that really comes through in everything she’s accomplished which is awesome.”

There was a time when Rob Lowe really was dating everybody who was A lister ready. And why not? He was young and gorgeous and available. He dated Natasha Kinski, Demi Moore, Princess Stephanie and Melissa Gilbert and admitted to using MTV like a home shopping network. If he saw a sexy dancer on the latest Sting video he would get her number.

The opening chapter of his book Stories I Only Tell My Friends is about how he lived in awe of John Kennedy Junior – his heritage, the fact that all of his girlfriends loved him and when John Kennedy Jr saw that Lowe was married to Sheryl and expressed surprise ‘How did you settle down?’ and Lowe recommended that the gorgeous blonde now chatting with his wife was one that Kennedy should not let go, soon after Kennedy married Caroline. Just after he put Lowe on the cover of his magazine George he was killed in the plane crash.

But how did Lowe do it? How did the most handsome man in the world make monogamy interesting?

“When it came down to it, what kind of woman do you want? There were the Princess Stephanie’s who sleep till 5.00pm, wake up, dinner, no less than 15 people a night, a club, repeat, repeat, repeat. Or there’s the Sheryl Lowe’s who come from nothing and own their own house by the time they are 20.”

We realise he’s missing a pickle and the pickle arrives immediately. Not sure he’ll get this kind of service in the Midlands where he goes to shoot Wild Bill.

“I play an American law enforcement analyst whose father was a cop who never wanted to be ground down by the system. He went to Stanford, got his degree in algorithms and still ended up in law enforcement. He has a 13-year old daughter who’s struggling since her mom has died. He’s been headhunted by the police force in Boston UK to come and take care of the largest crime rate per capita in the UK.”

We’re not sure if the crime rate statistic is fact or fiction but in 2018 the Lincolnshire area crime rate was higher than average and in 2016 it was the highest in the UK.

“It’s a classic fish out of water – cosmopolitan American comes to the Midlands. It’s a different case each week but each case has a direct correlation to the growth and discovery of the character. It’s an interesting hybrid in the way that you could only do it in the UK because it’s a character driven piece with procedural elements. He’s a fly off at the mouth, say anything, hot tempered guy and he runs foul of the skittish British sensibility…”

But first up is the one man show. I tell him I can’t wait to see his show live. It has stand up comedy elements and Q&A. When Lowe endured of those infamous VH1 roasts, no one enjoyed it more than him. He loves a bit of self-roasting. Roasts are scary, people insult you but he was ‘bring it on’. He is thrilled by self-deprecation.

“I’m so excited to see how it plays in the UK. It’s predominantly comedy. I give myself a pretty good beating.”

Why does he do that? Pause.

“All my heroes – and I say this in no way self reverentially – were big movie stars who owned it, had tons of charisma and didn’t shy away from it and were unbelievably self-deprecating and self-aware. They got the joke yet they were also being very serious. So it’s in that spirit that I write my books.”

The books flow. They are serious without taking themselves seriously.

“This is like having a third book that I can continue to amend. A living, breathing thing. My reference and inspiration for the first book was David Niven. Niven had a way of writing that delivered everything you want from a celebrity memoir.”

Humour, revelation and flow. “And self-deprecation. Get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. There’s a substance to his book like when you’re done with it, it’s not disposable.”

And I would say it’s the same of Lowes, which opens with the John Kennedy Jr moments and goes through his uncomfortable family set up (parents divorced when he was 4) The gregarious father was absent and his mother, a teacher, loved language.

Born in Dayton, Ohio he was a working actor at 8, in repertory at 15. There’s a punchy chapter about his excitement at being chosen for The Outsiders and his anguish when he saw most of his scenes had been cut.

Of course, it’s a compelling read – what eighties fame felt like from the inside and how it slipped away. He doesn’t slip away from his infamous incident the night before the Democratic national convention. He was there at 24 supporting Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. He took two girls that he met in a nightclub back to his hotel room. His age had been checked rigidly. He assumed theirs had but one was only 16. Their encounter was filmed and the result was the very first leaked sex tape. The 16-year olds mother brought a civil suit against Lowe who ended up with a fine and 20 hours community service.

In the book he says that that night “would set in motion events that would ultimately, through a painful, long and circuitous path, lead me to greater happiness and fulfilment than I could ever have hoped for”

In the book he describes his return to TV in the West Wing and all of thats nuances…

“Writing a book for me was like writing an album. Do I want to open with a hit or the radio single? When Vanity Fair excerpted it, they opened with the radio single, the story about the casting of The Outsiders. All of my life I wanted to be on the cover of Vanity Fair. I never got it for my acting but my writing. For me Kennedy is the lead single (the hit). I also looked at having too many ballads, too many epic songs and that’s how I edited the book. When I do the show live, it’s the live album version as opposed to the studio version.

“What I wear has been an evolution. I started with a crisp suit, no tie, now it’s black jeans, black work boots, grey T shirt, leather jacket. It went from movie star to rock star. I base my entrance on the Rolling Stones. One of their nineties tours where all of a sudden there was a flash and they were just there. I don’t have a flash but I’m just there. It doesn’t feel like a show. It feels like a chat. The best part is the section where people ask questions.”

Are there any questions that he dreads? “No. the more unusual and off topic, the better the show is.” I wonder if US audiences talk about the sex tape, now 25 years old.

“I’ve done hundreds of Q&A’s with lots of questions each night and that never comes up.” I wonder if the British audiences are different in that they love the whiff of scandal, the idea of the beautiful being taken down into an ugly world, whereas American audiences prefer to raise people up.

“I don’t have any qualms about anything in my life. Everything’s in my book.” And it is. Those events are intimately depicted. He doesn’t shy away from it. It’s Lowe’s belief, if you front it out it makes it interesting, not dark and it adds to your charisma.

“I get a lot of West Wing questions and I love that. A lot of Parks and Rec questions.” His co-star in that, Rashida Jones referred to him as a benevolent narcissist. He beams when I bring it up, or is that the double expressos arriving?

“The show’s good for all ages. Kids who’ve rediscovered The Outsiders, middle aged women, maybe their husbands, predominantly female but not exclusively which is why you never know what subject they’re interested in.”

His career has been diverse, perhaps that’s the clue to its longevity. “I think you’ve got to have the goods. That’s prerequisite. Then you’ve got to be decently fortunate and pick the right things. Very few people can get it right every time.”

He says if he’d still been drinking, “It would have been over for me for sure. First of all, because of the pace of which I live my life… I did two years of a gruelling show called Code Black, a medical drama, then I went into directing, starring and editing a remake of The Bad Seed. And then I went to Africa for 6 weeks and shot a Netflix romantic comedy movie – Christmas in the Wild – it’s me and Kristin Davis. It’s in the vein of Eat, Pray, Love but in Africa. And then I partnered up with the people who made American Ninja Warrior and we made a version of it – the ultimate obstacle course but for the mind. The most technically complex set every built for a competition series. And my one man show – doing that is as close to being a rock star as I’ll ever get.

“Bradley Cooper’s done very well this year. Everyone’s raving about A Star Is Born and it’s a movie about addiction.”

Does that mean he’s slightly feeling it should have been him up there with the Kris Kristofferson beard, singing, talking amorously to Lady Gaga’s nose. “No.” He says he’s too busy getting on with what he has done to think about what he didn’t do.

His Bad Seed movie for Lifetime TV was a remake of the film noir about a child serial killer. He says, “I’m really proud of it. My books, my one man show and The Bad Seed are the most personal things I’ve ever done because they’re mine and I’m not for hire…”

He downs his double expresso. He once said he’d like to have an caffeine IV drip feed him. He corrects himself. “I love working with the great collaborators.”

The great collaborators of The West Wing tried to stop him getting the solo cover of George magazine which seems a bit mean because he was the name that got the show on TV in the first place. No one had heard of writer Aaron Sorkin back then.

“Sometimes you think you’re crazy and I think was it as intense as I remember? The other day somebody had me sign the cover of the first season DVD. I went to sign my picture and I couldn’t find my face because they’d put me in the back row even though I’m first billed in the show…That’s just mean.

“In all fairness the West Wing was so good it didn’t need me, but it needed me initially for people to pay attention to it and it needed me to get it on the air but after that the show was amazing, the writing was great and everybody was amazing. But everybody runs things differently. It was their show, they called it.”

I don’t think he’s losing any sleep over what happened in the nineties. I like the way he knows himself. Sure, he’s done a lot of work on himself but it’s not that. There’s no false modesty, there’s no self-aggrandisement. There is a love of language and a vivid imagination and a sense of separateness, of otherness and a need to communicate their very being. That usually comes from being an only child but he has a brother Chad.

He nods. “It’s interesting you say that. He was four years younger than me and four years is a big difference when you’re young, especially because from the time I was eight I knew what I wanted to do and every single thing in my life was seen through the lens of wanting to get where I wanted to get, even at eight. So that immediately puts you aside from everybody else.”

He was working in local theatre when he was eight and repertory when he was 15. “I was the breadwinner for the family because my dad paying child support was always a major trauma. He was a lawyer and my mother’s parents had some money. My family was solidly middle class.

But is he a benevolent narcissist?

“All my heroes are benevolent narcissists. Rashida also said that her father, Quincy Jones, is the Mount Rushmore of benevolent narcissists, so anything where I’m mentioned in the same sentence as Quincy, I’m in. There is the element with the stars that I look up to as being larger than life and being unashamed about it. They are approachable and down to earth. That combination is rare but it’s what I love.”

That’s part of the complexity that makes him charismatic. He is larger than life yet approachable and unashamed. And what’s also rare is a lasting marriage. He nods.

“I talk a lot about Sheryl in the show. If I do another version at some point, the show will be almost exclusively on me and my wife. When I talk about her the audience love it because it’s humanising. Everybody is either married, wants to be married or had a bad marriage. I have a long sequence about why it’s impossible to sleep in the same bed as my wife (don’t want to ruin his punchline here. It’s partly because she snores and partly because of her obsessive watching Family Feud 16 episodes a night).”

People want to know how does he make monogamy interesting?

“I do talk about that but a little elliptically. You need to know it’s going to be a struggle at times. I don’t believe it’s a natural arrangement in terms of nature. But in terms of society, in terms of happiness, health, wellbeing, in terms of success nothing beats it. People’s natural inclination is to have a devil on their shoulder saying ‘is this it? Is this the last first kiss I’ll ever have? Is this the last first butterflies I’ll ever have? Is this my last wild, crazy sex I’ll ever have? These are all the things that may or may not be true, that get in the way. The key to it all is the same thing that Alfred Hitchcock said when he was asked what was the key to a hit movie. ‘Casting’. And I was great at casting. Do you know the phrase the picker is broken?”

I’ve never heard that phrase – it means making bad choices. What if you let other people pick you?

“Sometimes I like to let the inertia of events make decisions for me because it takes the pressure off. I’ve done a lot of thinking on this about intimacy and sex, intimacy and love, intimacy and relationships and I’ve done a lot, a lot, a lot of work on it.”

Does he think that sexual intimacy and love intimacy can be the opposite? For instance, one can be intimate sexually with someone and not love that person and vice versa.

“Absolutely. You’ve diagnosed the problem. Many people have that problem and that’s why most people have a hard time with long term monogamy because it’s not easy, but the integration of that is where long term intimacy and long-term monogamy lives. I know this 100% to be true.”

There’s a glint in his cornflower blue eye. It’s not quite a tear. More a chink in his steadfastness. A chink that says he always knows the right thing but sometimes he struggles.

“Left to my own devices I’m right there with you but you have to work on these things. Relationships. And if you’re not willing to work it’s not going to happen. If you’re not willing to forgive it’s not going to happen. People want to die proudly on their sword and oftentimes there’s more dignity in forgiveness. People may be able to grow and change and work on themselves too and not make the same mistakes over and over.”

The sunlight catches the diamond triangle on the wizardy looking ring. Maybe being in recovery is part of the magic because people who are recovering alcoholics have been forced to rock bottom and are forced to talk openly about themselves and to themselves.

“Working on yourself is not fun. Worse than painful, it can be boring. But if I look at the lengths I used to go to to find some bad behaviour, I should be able to go to those lengths to make my life better.”

He has said that his rock bottom came when he decided to finish a bottle of tequila rather than go home to his dying grandfather. Of course, he would never do such a thing now but the fact that he once did makes him much more human.

He’s politically savvy too. Fascinated by the post Brexit world. He remembers, “watching as the vote came in and Christiane Amanpour practically vomiting and crying as the sun came up on Big Ben. There’s nothing worse than a foreigner weighing in on the affairs of another country. That said, I’m so interested. I think there’s a connection to people in the US who are feeling forgotten and ignored and who are really mad. I’m fascinated by all of it. When I was in Africa I was out of the cable news cycle. I had broken my addiction for news and I feel the better for it.”

I’m not sure if I believe that. He’s far too keen to talk about Richard Quest – British CNN newsman.

He’s looking forward to his time in post Brexit Britain because watching people and how things change interests him.

“I must say that London was a tough nut to crack. I remember vividly at the height of my teen idol phase walking the streets of London in the midday sun and it was crickets. They were very slow to the party and I remember my 21-year old ego thinking what’s going on here? I was used to walking down the street having my clothes ripped off. I walked in London in anonymity.”

Really? No one ripped his clothes off?

“Well…..Well I have to go now.”

As he strides out through the Polo Lounge, every head turns to watch him and I’m sure he won’t walk in London in anonymity again.

Barbra Streisand at 76 has come up with an album of songs that she wrote as a protest against President Trump and his regime. It’s her first album of original songs for over a decade. The songs could be love songs although the album Walls is a mixture of love and anger.

She’s wearing slinky black flares, black suede boots, a black fluffy jumper and a vintage lace collar. Around her neck is a beautiful miniature of her now departed dog Sammy, a Coton du Tolear. The white curly fluffy dog went with her to every interview, every concert and recording session.

Streisand mourned her passing “as if it was a child.” Sammy had an “oddball personality,” so it could have been her actually genetic child. She identified with her intensely. So much so that two of her new dogs Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet are clones of Sammy and a third, Fanny is a distant cousin.

We meet in a studio just across the road from her house in Malibu – the one with the rose gardens and her collection of dolls houses. The dogs didn’t join us. “Because there are three of them and they would take over. The two dogs are made from Sammy. They’re her DNA. They are clones. This is the technique – how they make clones which is used in cancer research. The pet fund wrote me a letter that said thank you for doing this. Cancer is very prevalent and growing in both cats and dogs because of the pet food industry, the pesticides etc… Nobody had to die to make a clone. They took a cell from the inside of Sammy’s cheek and another from the outside of her tummy right before she died. You don’t know if you’re going to get a dog. You can get none, you can get five and I got two.”

Presumably she went via the clone route because she loved Sammy so much she wanted to replicate her so are the puppies like her?

“Not in personality but they look just like her. They’re curly haired like her. The breeder told me she was a rarity because she was a runt. If these dogs are for shows they have straight hair. Sammy was at my last show in New York – it was such a rarity to get a curly haired one so in order to have a curly haired dog I had to clone Sammy.”

It’s easy to conjure the image of Streisand with her tight curly perm in A Star Is Born. Perhaps Sammy reminded her of herself in that. Samantha is now around her neck close to her heart forever. I tell her I have my cat Mr Love’s fur in my locket.

“Uh huh. I have a lock of her hair in my other locket.” It’s a bonding moment. We have both got dead pets round our neck. “It’s unconditional love,” she says “and you know love in sickness and health, curly or straight.

Momentarily she seems vulnerable. You want to reach out to her, hug her even. You feel you know her. You’ve known her songs all your life and her voice has touched you, slipped inside of you so easily. But despite our bonding she bristles as my arm touches her by accident. It goes back to her mother. She wasn’t a hugger and was always very critical, yet somehow despite this she found self-belief and drive. She’s been a star for a lifetime yet still she doesn’t like being photographed. She changes the subject back to the record.

“You’ve heard the album,” she says, eager to talk about it. Every time I meet her I think it’s going to be the last tour, the last show, the last album yet this work feels very fresh. It has a new and different energy to it. You can tell that she’s written a lot of the songs and the ones she hasn’t she sings in a new way. Her voice is fierce, not thin, not old. It cracks into your heart. Oddly even though it’s not about a man woman love struggle it’s passionate.

“That’s exactly right. That’s what it felt like creating it, that it had a different energy.” She has written or co-written 7 original songs which appear on the album including Walls – that keep you in as well as keep you out. It’s a plea to unite a divided country. It’s about physical walls and emotional walls.

The single Don’t Lie to Me has the lyrics “How do you win if we all lose?” She sings it like a diva. The truest sense of the word.

She includes the Burt Bacharach classic What the World Needs Now Is Love, originally written as a Vietnam protest song but equally valid if not more so today. The album ends with Happy Days. It’s a song she’s sung often at the end of her concerts and also for the Clintons at President Clinton’s inauguration and as a celebration of democracy. This time it’s sung with an irony so piquant you can feel her tears.

Lady Liberty is about “how they came from different lands, different religions, languages and culture, all seeing the American dream. The subject of immigration is complex and requires deep contemplation not knee jerk reactions. Now if you look at her face you’ll see tears falling from Lady Liberty’s eyes. Love Is Never Wrong is about love being the most powerful force in the universe. It transcends race, religion and sexual orientation – something I’ve always believed everyone has the right to love whoever they want to. I tell her the record is raw.

“Raw,” she nods. “I’ve never thought of that word for it.” Indeed, you don’t normally associate raw with Streisand. You think smooth or perhaps silky and soaring, definitely comfortable but not this. I tell her when I first heard the album, it was the first time I felt relieved that I wasn’t on Prozac because I was able to feel the full experience.

“Oh!” she says excited now. “Will you say that in the article because that’s very funny? I bet you won’t say that right. But you’re right. Prozac dulls your senses. When my mother was on it she forgot to be angry. She had dementia as well and she forgot that she was always very angry but that pill really helped.”

Maybe it was because of the dementia she forgot to be angry? “No, it was those pills.”

I told her I had a male friend who said he liked me much better on Prozac because I wasn’t angry. I kept on with it longer than I should have. “The guy or the Prozac?” Both.

She was clearly not on Prozac when writing this album because there’s a lot of anger in it. “Oh yes there is. I believe in truth and I believe if I’m truthful in what I’m singing about that comes across as being passionately upset with what is happening to my country.”

Her expression of dissatisfaction with the current president began with a series of very smart Tweets – an eloquent counterpart to the Trump potty mouth outbursts . Then she wrote articles for The Huffington Post (The Fake President and Our President Cruella de Vil) and then came the songs. They are cleverly written. They work on two levels. Love songs that can be interoperated as personal and protest love songs for the world.

“That’s right, that’s right,” she says excitedly. “I’m so glad you get this.” This is why you let me come back. Because I get it.

“Last time you brought me cake. This time I get nothing. But that’s good. I’m on a diet. It’s good you forgot.” I didn’t forget, I was told that she was trying to diet so I didn’t bring the cake “OK, but this President did make me anxious and hungry for pancakes. Buckwheat pancakes. I had to put butter on them and maple syrup to ease the pain. People don’t realise what food does for you. It makes you feel good. My son brought me pancakes at my last recording session from a great place. They’re made of oatmeal but obviously they have sugar in them and that’s why they taste so good. They’re very soothing to the brain.”

Pancakes are very American. It was as if she was eating the most delicious, the most American food to savour it, as if it too was in jeopardy.

“I live in a house that’s filled with Americana. American art, American furniture. I really love my country and it’s painful to see democracy being assaulted, institutions being assaulted and women being assaulted.”

We digress to the painful topic of women’s abortion rights and the possibility of women no longer being in control of their own bodies and having the long fought (in the early 70s) right to choose.

“Can you imagine…?” she says darkly and then, “There’s a war between people who want to live in the future and look forward to the future and people who want to live in the past. Imagine women who after forty-something years who have had the right to choose, now, perhaps won’t.”

President Trump was elected by a small majority but women certainly voted for him. Why would women vote for a man who does not let them control their own bodies? Why would women vote for misogyny?

“It’s a terribly complex thing. A lot of women vote the way their husbands vote. They don’t believe enough in their own thoughts so they trust their husbands. Maybe that woman who is so articulate, so experienced and so presidential (Hillary), so fit for the presidency, was too intimidating for some women. Perhaps she made women feel unsuccessful. Women are competitive and so forth. All of this was so devastating to me and I was heartbroken and very sad so I wanted to write about it, sing about it and deliver an album and it was perfect timing (as synagogues are being blown up and bombs delivered to any luminary who has had something bad to say about President Trump). I just did it.”

I’m not sure she realizes how brave it is to stand up and stand out and I wonder if she ever wanted to take it further – to be that woman who was articulate and presidential and could talk passionately and open people’s eyes. Surely there’s a situation vacant in the Democratic party that she may want to fill?

“No. I don’t want to go into politics. I don’t think I’m articulate enough and it’s too late for me. Maybe when I was younger but not now. I like my garden too much. I like staying home. I like privacy. I like writing my book…sort of.”

She’s still writing that autobiography? “Yeah, four years already. I’m trying to convince the publisher to do it in two volumes so I could stop the first volume with my Harvard speech.” She is very proud of this speech. “It was in a book called The 100 Greatest Speeches of the 20th Century. But they edited it without showing me and that was not nice. I like manners. People in England have manners. They are always very nice to me.”

Streisand comes across as a woman of power, a woman unafraid of being criticised because she’s in control. A woman that feels being seen as controlling isn’t a negative attribute. It’s been an interesting journey to get to that point.

In 1976, as producer and lead actress of A Star Is Born she had final cut of the movie. The ultimate control which is very rare and much sort after but she gave her power away. She cut out some of her own scenes because she didn’t want to be criticised for being a producer and having too much screen time. Why? She shakes her head.

“I love constructive criticism. It helps me learn something but I didn’t want to be … just criticised. “ Maybe this is a deep seated fear locked in by her super critical mother. There is anxiety in her eyes as she talks.

“A woman writer in the New York times criticised when I performed at the Clinton’s inauguration. She attacked my suit. It was a man’s suit and I wore great diamonds with it and a waistcoat. I like the combination of masculinity and femininity. I liked the feminisation of masculinity. I’m fascinated even in furniture, I like strong architectural lines covered in pink velvet. I like men who are masculine but have a feminine side. I like men who cry at movies and they like soft things. It just makes them complex and that’s interesting. So this woman criticised my suit with diamonds. This woman was talking about my sexuality because I was wearing a low cut vest and the legs of the trousers had a slit. I have a passion for design and that criticism was unfair.

It always seems to me unfair that she was never acknowledged as a beauty. Today she has a mesmerizing presence and her skin glows and not in an artificial way. She doesnt look fake. She has a lioness quality.

In the mid seventies people in Hollywood weren’t used to a woman being in control. She was producing ASIB for First Artists – a company originally set up for Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and herself. In exchange for no salary up front they could make their own film with full creative control and a piece of the back end which they only got if the film was a hit. Her budget was $6,000,000 and any penny spent over that had to come out of her own pocket.

“I was completely responsible for the money and the content.”

She updated the film from the Judy garland original (1954) to reflect the changing of the times.

“I wanted her to write her own songs. I wanted the character played by a liberated woman yet I gave away the title of producer and took a lessor one and I even cut out certain scenes of mine so I would have less screen time.”

Instead of being praised, she was vilified.

“I was put on a magazine cover bald and the title was ‘A Star Is Shorn’ They made me bald. Why? Because I was a woman in control and they wanted…” her voice trails. They wanted her to look horrible. “That’s right. So I got scared and I gave them power. But when I directed Yentl I had power artistically but I had a completion bond on my shoulder so I couldn’t go overbudget. I went only a tiny bit overbudget which was fine. I got an award for directing and I said it’s wonderful not to have to raise your voice because people are finally listening when you are the director. So… I’m going to direct another film and I won’t give power away in the way I did earlier.

“ When I’m directing I do give power away to make people feel they’re needed. I would make sure my understudy felt involved. ‘Why don’t you work with the cinematographer while I’m working on the script. Why don’t you measure distances for the lens and show me what marks I need to hit.’ In other words, empowering people. I want everybody to feel needed on the set.

“I enjoy working in England, perhaps because you have a Queen and you have a woman Prime Minister. I think they are less intimidated by a woman with power.”

Perhaps that just because she doesn’t live in England.

Is she acting as well as directing in the new movie?

“I can’t really talk about it. We’ve signed contracts but until I know more… I can tell you I’m not acting. I don’t like acting. I don’t like make believe. I like real life.”

That’s a shame. She’s so good at it. “I’m crap at it.” It always surprises me when she’s self-deprecating. Its part of what makes her an icon. The ability to take herself seriously and not seriously at all

The Way We Were still moves me – the ultimate impossible love story – she as the archetypal jew and Robert Redford as the archetypal WASP. It won her an Oscar nomination. She’s always played characters who had an uneasy vulnerability – you don’t expect that of her in real life. You do expect that she is a fighter, a campaigner for love, for truth, for dogs.

Its easy to feel powerless – that’s why she’s so compelled now to stand up to Trump – to grab back the power.

I just saw the new version of A Star Is Born. Whether it’s better than the previous version, divides the nation. Did she think Lady Gaga was channelling herself in some parts?

“I don’t know. Did she say anything about that? I haven’t seen it but I know they used the nose thing.”

The original movie, written by Joan Didion, made a reference to Streisand’s nose. At the time she was considered kooky looking, a prominent noise was not seen as a bonafide glamour-puss movie star nose. In the Gaga/Bradley Cooper version they overplay the nose with several references to Gaga’s nose and a lot of nose shots. At the time Streisand’s nose was considered not beautiful and she had to fight to keep it untouched in movies, on record covers and refused any nose jobs in real life. Gaga is not known for her nose but none the less the movie makes a big deal of it.

Streisand shrugs. “I haven’t seen the whole movie but I saw the beginning and it looked like mine. Bradley (Cooper) showed me that and the beginning started with the same concert and then singing in a little club.”

I note the new A Star Is Born has the same producer as her version – Jon Peters – her hairdresser who became her boyfriend and thereafter a big deal producer – with her help. Perhaps that’s why there are some of the same nuances. Because of the same producer.

“Well he was the one I gave the credit to.” Does she mean gave her power away to. “That’s right.” Because he was her boyfriend too?

“Because I wanted him to have respect on the set. He had good ideas. The first time I walked into his house he had crude burnt wood frames paired with lace curtains at the windows. He understood masculinity and femininity. He was complex. I liked that.”

I am sure she still likes Jon Peters although she does not like being reminded that she gave her power away to a man because she feared criticism for being overbearing.

It’s a complex thing, she likes strong men but not bowing down to them . She has the right balance with her husband of 20 years James Brolin

“My husband has the perfect forehead, the perfect jaw, the perfect teeth. Even when he makes me angry I still get a kick out of his symmetry”

She is also immensely loyal – she has had the same manager – Marty Erlichman for 52 years.

Someone else who works with her is waving their hands in a panic. “I have to get out. I have to go.” One more thing. “What?” she says suspiciously. A picture. Streisand has famously and repeatedly said no to impromptu pictures. She’s still afraid of a bad shot, of criticism? She says -she’s going to do it.

It takes bravery and a little bit of control. “I’ll do it but not with your phone. With mine so I can have power to delete.” She directs the way we’re sitting, tells the assistant with the phone, “you’re going down too low.” I move closer to her, so close I’m almost touching her but of course we’re not going to touch. I feel that’s making her uncomfortable.

Her hair sweeps long beyond her shoulders. It’s beigey blonde the colour of a lions mane. It even mingles with mine. I can smell her hair. It smells of roses, perhaps from her own garden. It’s a heady smell. She makes me promise that I won’t put the picture in the paper and before she goes I read her a message from my friend Nancy who grew up with a criticising mother, like Streisand’s, and wanted me to let her know, “She’s helped me throughout my life. She’s my secret mother. I love her. I love the way she sings with skill and abandon. I love what she’s doing today. It shows the spirit of women and it shows that I was right to love her. No one else is sticking their neck out politically and she’s on the right side of history.”

She’s taken the picture and she’s taken the compliment and she likes it very much that she’s on the right side of history.